Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

  Meanwhile in Alexandria, Arabi’s troops had withdrawn from the forts and an eight-hundred-man naval brigade under Fisher’s command had landed to face the Egyptian troops still menacing the city’s outskirts. Inside the city, the streets were in the hands of a mob. Fisher recommended that Beresford be appointed provost marshal and chief of police, and Lord Charles set out with a tiny force of sixty bluejackets and marines to restore order. “Arabs were murdering23 each other for loot under my nose,” Beresford said, “and wretches were running about with fire balls and torches.” Within five days, the city was calm. “I only had to shoot24 five men by drumhead courtmartial besides flogging a certain number,” One episode suggests Beresford’s style of command:

  “I was at work... [when]25 a sudden tumult arose in the street. I went out to perceive a huge Irish Marine Artilleryman engaged in furious conflict with five or six men of the patrol. They had got handcuffs on him and he was fighting with manacled hands. I asked the sergeant what was the matter.

  “‘He’s drunk, sir. We are going to lock him up.’

  “‘Let him go,’ I said.

  “The men fell back and the Irishman... turned upon me like a wild beast at bay. The man was in a frenzy. Standing directly in front of him, I spoke to him quietly.

  “‘Now, my lad, listen to me.... You’re an Irishman and you’ve had a little too much to drink, like many of us at times. But you are all right. Think a moment. Irishmen don’t behave like this in the presence of the enemy. Nor will you. Why, we may be in a tight place tomorrow and who’s going to back me then? You are. You’re worth fifty of the enemy. You’re the man I want!’

  “As I talked to him, the expression on his face changed from desperation to a look of bewilderment, and from bewilderment to understanding; and then he suddenly broke down. He turned his head aside and cried. I told the sergeant to take him away and give him some tea.”

  Two years later, the Prince of Wales interceded again and Beresford returned to Egypt, high adventure, and personal glory. At the Prince’s request, Lord Wolseley agreed to take Lord Charles as his naval aide-de-camp with the army attempting to relieve Khartoum, where the Mahdi was besieging General Gordon. The Sudan, as big as India, possessed no roads, so the British troops toiled up the river Nile, 1,650 miles from Cairo to Khartoum. Nearing the end and fearing that Gordon could not last, Wolseley sent a desert column ahead, cutting across one of the giant loops in the ancient river. Sixteen hundred men, Beresford among them, set off across 176 miles of baking sand. Water gave out and camels died. Then came the Arabs. “With a roar26 like the roar of the sea, an immense surging wave of white-sashed black forms, brandishing bright spears and flashing swords,” rolled down on the British column. The soldiers formed a hollow square; Beresford’s place was firing a naval Gardner gun straight into the onrushing tide of green and white banners and shining metal. When the wave rolled into the British line, all the men at Beresford’s guns were killed except Lord Charles. He killed a man simply by holding “my sword rigid27 at arm’s length. He ran right up the blade to the hilt.” Another Arab thrust at Beresford with his spear. Beresford deflected the point with his hand, which was ripped to the bone. The wave rolled back and the British marched on to the river below Khartoum. A boat sent up to the city found the Mahdi’s flag floating on the ramparts: the city had fallen two days before. But Beresford’s adventures were not over. Now in command of a makeshift river gunboat, he had to run a gauntlet of enemy forts to rescue the crew of another English boat. His own boiler was holed and he spent a desperate night making repairs while lying within range of the Mahdi’s artillery. Once the boiler was patched and fresh steam raised, Beresford ran back down the river, all guns blazing. It was the stuff of legend.

  On Beresford’s return to London, the Prince of Wales helped him to obtain the post of Fourth Sea Lord, the junior Lord of the Admiralty. Inside the navy’s citadel, Beresford continued to attack his superiors. He wrote a secret memorandum showing that the British Fleet was unprepared for war; the document leaked out into the columns of the Pall Mall Gazette. The other Sea Lords had had enough of him and, to get him out of the Admiralty, out of the House of Commons, out of London, out of England, he was posted to command of the cruiser Undaunted in the Mediterranean. By the time he left, it was not only the admirals who had seen enough of Lord Charles Beresford.

  During these years in London, Lord Charles—then in his early forties—almost capsized socially by becoming involved in a luridly reckless attack on his old friend and patron, the Prince of Wales. Ferocious, insulting letters flowed from Beresford’s busy pen and at one point, blind with rage, he raised his fist to strike the Heir to the Throne. It happened, of course, because of a woman. Or rather, two women, Lady Brooke and Lady Charles Beresford.

  The youthful Lord Charles had been one of the Prince’s closest companions. It was Lord Charles who introduced the Prince to one of the passions of Bertie’s life, the racetrack; the Prince’s first racehorse was an animal named Stonehenge, bought for him by Beresford. The Prince enjoyed Lord Charles’ high spirits and rollicking good humor. He stood up for his excitable friend against ministers of the Crown and even against his mother. The Prince was familiar with Beresford’s famous Irish temper but, until the affair of Lady Brooke, had never felt it directed against himself.

  Returning to London from the Sudan, Beresford became involved with Frances (known as Daisy), Lady Brooke,fn1 then in her late twenties, the most dazzling of the beauties in the Marlborough House set. The affair ran its course and Beresford returned to his wife. But Lady Brooke, to her way of thinking abandoned prematurely, wrote a passionate letter of appeal to Lord Charles. This document fell into the hands of Lady Charles, who turned it over to her lawyer as insurance on her husband’s future good behavior. Lady Brooke, unable to abide the thought of her unexploded bomb resting in enemy hands, decided to seek a white knight.

  The distressed beauty went to see the Prince of Wales, beseeching him to help her save her reputation by retrieving the incendiary letter. The Prince, always susceptible to beauty, called on the lawyer, read the letter, and decided that it should best be burned. Twice he called on Lady Charles to ask her permission that this be done. Bluntly, she advised her future sovereign to mind his own business. Lord Charles, now firmly reinstalled in his role as faithful husband, vigorously supported his wife.

  In the meantime, Lady Brooke and the Prince of Wales discovered other interests in common, and she was seen constantly at his side. Bertie, no doubt frequently reminded of Lady Charles’ rude intransigence in rebuffing his good offices, instructed that she be dropped from the invitation list to Marlborough House. Beresford, believing his wife condemned to social oblivion, called on the Prince on the eve of leaving to take command of the Undaunted. Forgetting himself, he called the Prince “a coward” and “a blackguard”28 and clenched his fist to strike. Bertie begged his old friend to desist, reminding him that the blow would cost him his commission in the navy and condemn him to eternal social darkness. Lord Charles, only slightly cooled off, went to sea, and Lady Charles, still excluded from the golden circle, threatened to abandon England and live abroad.

  Beresford, steaming up and down the Mediterranean, paced his cabin and composed a sulphurous letter to the Prince, threatening public exposure of many aspects of the Prince’s private behavior. “The days of duelling29 are past,” he wrote to the Prince, “but there is a more just way of getting right done than can duelling, and that is—publicity.” Instead of sending it directly to the Prince, however, he mailed the letter to his wife, instructing her to show it to the Prime Minister. Lord Salisbury’s style of business was to avoid all avoidable storms, but a hot-tempered Irishman threatening to drag the Heir to the Throne into the mud could not be ignored. Salisbury called on Lady Charles and wrote to her husband to calm their mutual rage, now bordering on hysteria. The Princess of Wales, who normally overlooked her husband’s indiscretions, was sufficiently upset to remain in Russia with her siste
r, the Empress Marie, and did not return to England for the celebration of her husband’s fiftieth birthday. She did hurry home, however, when typhoid struck her son Prince George, and once back, joined the fray, committing herself loyally and absolutely to her husband and pouring her fury on both Beresfords. From Malta, Beresford, undaunted, delivered another salvo, declaring: “I now demand an apology30 from Your Royal Highness, failing which... I shall no longer intervene to prevent these matters becoming public.” Unless the Prince made amends for ostracizing his wife, Beresford thundered, he would resign his commission and take his wife to live in France.

  Eventually, Lord Salisbury resolved the matter by drafting a letter to Lord Charles and persuading a reluctant Prince to sign it. “Dear Lord Charles Beresford,”31 the letter read, “I regret to find from your letter of the 23rd instant that circumstances have occurred which have led Lady Charles Beresford to believe that it was my intention to publicly wound her feelings. I have never had any such intention and I regret that she should have been led to conceive such an erroneous impression upon the point. I remain, Yours truly...”

  Lord Salisbury’s plan then called for the return of the letter to the author, which occurred, whereupon the visible storm clouds lifted. Inwardly, however, the Prince of Wales continued to seethe. Writing to Lord Charles’ brother, the Marquess of Waterford, the Prince declared, “I have no desire32 to advert to what occurred at the end of last year; but I can never forget and shall never forgive the conduct of your brother and his wife towards me. His base ingratitude, after a friendship of about 20 years, has hurt me more than words can say. You, who have so chivalrous a nature and are such a thorough gentleman, will be able to form some opinion of what my feelings on the subject are....” Twenty years later, when Lord Charles was locked in battle with a mighty adversary, First Sea Lord and Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher, his erstwhile comrade the Prince of Wales—now become King Edward VII—was his patron no longer. Throughout the trials which shook the Admiralty from 1907 to 1909, the King’s friendship was the rock on which Fisher stood.

  fn1 Later, Countess of Warwick.

  Chapter 28

  Fisher Versus Beresford

  Beresford’s career continued to advance. After four years as captain of the Undaunted in the Mediterranean, he spent three years ashore at the Chatham Naval Dockyard. Then, like most naval officers, he languished on half pay, awaiting his next command. It was during these periods, when he was away from the navy, that Beresford’s life was unlike that of other navy captains. On a visit to Berlin, for example, Lord Charles was invited to lunch by Bismarck, then newly ejected from the Chancellorship. The old man told Lord Charles that he liked the English and that he believed that “the British fleet1 was the greatest factor for peace in Europe.” “We drank much beer,”2 Beresford reported of their two hours together, “and all the time his gigantic boar-hound, lying beside him, stared fixedly at me with a red and lurid eye.” Beresford was constantly seen on speakers’ platforms throughout England; seeking to benefit from his popularity, forty parliamentary constituencies approached him about becoming their candidate. In 1897, he ran for a seat for York and was elected. That same year, a book, Life of Nelson and His Times, was published under the names of Lord Charles and a collaborator. In 1898, Lord Charles traveled to China at the behest of the British Chamber of Commerce to investigate commercial, social, and military conditions. He returned across the Pacific, stopping to call on the Emperor of Japan and, after crossing America by train, on President McKinley. In New York, trading was halted for two minutes on the New York Stock Exchange so that the famous British visitor could address the members from the floor. His short speech, he was told, cost the exchange $100,000 a second in lost time.

  At the end of 1899, Beresford, now promoted to Rear Admiral, was appointed second in command of the Mediterranean Fleet to fly his flag in the battleship Ramillies. The Commander-in-Chief, his immediate superior, was Vice Admiral Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher. Beresford’s path had not crossed Fisher’s since the bombardment of Alexandria seventeen years before, but each was aware of the other’s career. Fisher, along with many of his colleagues, was offended by Lord Charles’ constant criticism of the Admiralty from places where he was relatively immune, such as the House of Commons, on lecture platforms, and in the press. “He really is very stupid,”3 Fisher wrote of Beresford to the First Lord in 1894, “but he can’t resist self-advertisement.” For his part, Beresford recognized and admired Fisher’s dedication to improvement in gunnery and fighting efficiency. What he may have felt about Fisher the man (and social inferior) he kept to himself, at least for the moment.

  Both men were well known in the country, but at that time Beresford’s popularity and celebrity were greater than Fisher’s. Lord Charles always made good copy and when the press learned that the new admiral and his bulldog were going to the Mediterranean, stories appeared announcing that Lord Charles would soon whip the fleet into fighting shape. The implied slur—that the actual fleet commander was not competent—was perhaps unintended, but it did not at all please Sir John Fisher. Unfortunately, and probably unintentionally, Beresford had scarcely arrived when he seemed to infringe upon the prerogative of his sensitive superior. One day a party of Ramillies signalmen4 landed on the parade ground at Malta, accompanied by Lord Charles and a number of other officers. Each signalman—Beresford announced to his guests—represented a battleship, and Beresford’s handling of this human battle squadron on the parade ground would demonstrate the tactics which he would later employ with the battle fleet at sea. News of this unusual drill quickly reached Fisher and a series of flags immediately soared up the halyards of Fisher’s flagship: “Ramillies signalmen to return to their ship immediately. Report in writing why station orders not obeyed.” (Malta station orders were that seamen were not to be landed for drill without permission of the chief of staff and, therefore, of the Commander-in-Chief.) Beresford brought his explanation to Fisher’s cabin, whereupon Fisher told him that it was he, Fisher, who commanded the fleet and would supervise its training and maneuvers. Beresford accepted the rebuke and apologized.

  Soon another incident occurred. The Grand Harbor at Valletta, Malta, is small and crowded. All around are hills, covered with houses, palaces, ramparts, and fortified towers, rising steeply from the water’s edge. The entrance to the harbor is narrow, the channel tortuous. Despite this, it was Fisher’s habit to lead the fleet in at high speed, moor quickly, go ashore, and mount the ramparts to watch the rest of the fleet enter the harbor. On this occasion, Ramillies, Beresford’s flagship, came in, tried to pick up her buoy, failed, and swung around, blocking the harbor and delaying the ships behind her. Disgusted, Fisher signalled to Beresford (who was not responsible for the ship-handling of his flagship): “Your flagship5 is to proceed to sea and come in again in a seamanlike manner.” Within minutes, this signal, a public rebuke from the Commander-in-Chief to his second in command, was being discussed in every ship of the fleet. Beresford did not complain.

  Fisher, who spoke in strong language and clearly expected those around him not to take offense, had no grudge against Beresford and was as quick to praise as he was to criticize. “Beresford did uncommonly well,”6 he wrote after fleet maneuvers in 1900, “and is much pleased at my praising him, which he thoroughly deserved.” “He is a first rate officer afloat,7 no better exists in my opinion,” Fisher said in 1902. “In the two years he has been under my command he has never failed once to do everything he has been ordered, cheerfully and zealously and has always done it well. In the Atlantic last year, the tactical handling of the two fleets under Wilson and Beresford, pitted against each other off Cape St. Vincent for two days was... simply admirable on both sides. If anything, Beresford had the advantage and Wilson admitted it.”

  Fisher recognized Beresford’s popularity with the British public—“He could do so much good8 for the Navy... there is no doubt the ‘oi polloi’ believe in him and listen to him like no one else”—but he dep
lored his subordinate’s freewheeling ways. “I am very sorry9 about Beresford’s extravagances,” he wrote to Lord Selborne. “He promised me faithfully (for we have been great friends) he would be circumspect and judicious. He has been neither....” And again to Selborne: “There is a good deal10 in what Beresford urges but he exaggerates so much that his good ideas become deformities and are impractical, and his want of taste and his uncontrolled desire for notoriety alienates his brother officers.”

  Beresford’s acknowledgment of Fisher’s achievement with the Mediterranean Fleet was generous. “Under the command11 of Sir John Fisher,” Beresford wrote, “its efficiency was admirable.... From a 12 knot fleet with breakdowns, he made a 15 knot fleet without breakdowns.” Fleet training and exercises were based “not on tradition, but on the probabilities of war.”

  Fisher’s presence did not change Lord Charles’ habits of a lifetime. While his ship was at Gibraltar, he arranged and won a motorcar race from the bottom of the Rock to the top; not long after, he cracked his pelvis when his hunter failed to clear a hedge and came down on top of its rider. Returning to England in 1902, he was elected to the House for Woolwich and promptly moved a reduction in the First Lord’s salary as penalty for defects in Admiralty administration. In New York City, he told a Pilgrims’ Society meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria that “battleships are cheaper12 than battles,” a phrase which the navalist President Theodore Roosevelt picked up and repeated.

  In February 1903, Lord Charles, now a vice admiral, took command of the old Channel Fleet. (This force was later renamed the Atlantic Fleet.) It was the first of three major fleet commands assigned to him within the next five years. He began with six first-class battleships and soon was given two more. He worked his ships and seamen as hard as Fisher did: “The Navy, unlike the Army,13 is always on active service.... In the Navy, the only difference between peace and war is that in war the target fires back.” Beresford ordered his ships “never to go to sea or steam from port to port without practising some exercise or tactical problem. For every pound’s worth of coal burnt, a pound’s worth of training.”